“Dark Lords, dark masters, bequeath me this gift.” The air in the tiny room grew foul, drew itself down towards blackness. Cornelisz felt it at the rear of his mind, a welcome weight like the pressure of a massive hand upon his bowed head. “Bequeath me this gift.”
A voice in his ears, like the crashing of waves upon a distant cliff face, the language unknown but the tone questioning. Cornelisz bent lower, opened his mind as far as he was capable. “Land,” he muttered. “Bring me land to house my Master.”
The waves receded. Cornelisz held his breath. The candles under his hands were hot, burning designs into his palms. His mind crumbled under the force of the spirits leaning upon it. He tried to exhale, couldn’t, panicked for a moment before giving in to the airlessness and the odour of decay within him. The waves sensed his submission, confirmed his obeisance. They crashed once more against his mind, then just as suddenly, were gone.
Cornelisz retched as the salt-and-sweat air of the ship reasserted itself, then quickly removed his hands from the candles. They were cold, of course, the skin of his hands clear and unblemished. He stared at them for a moment, then rubbed them down his vest. A dozen times he had performed this ritual, a dozen grovelling requests to the beings his Master, Torrentius, had introduced to him. Still, he was unnerved. He took a minute to control his ragged breathing, then swept the candles and chalk back into the bottom of his trunk and rubbed out the pentacle with the sleeves of his shirt.
He had barely finished when the ship hit the rocks.
No sooner had the last swirl of black air dissipated than a great screech of rending wood echoed through the hull. Cornelisz was thrown onto his face as the 650 ton ship came to a shuddering halt, lurched forward a dozen feet, and stopped again. The world tipped, then righted itself, stopping partway to the horizontal so that the floor fell away from him at the gentlest of angles. Cornelisz felt blood on his mouth, wiped it away with the back of his hand, then licked at the rest. He could hear screams now, the sounds of panic in the dark around him. Boot steps clattered as men leaped to all corners of the boat. Cornelisz laughed like a madman set free. He dragged himself to his feet, and staggered to the nearest ladder, then hauled himself up to the angled deck above.
Pelsaert and Jacobsz still stood on the poop deck, but their argument had devolved into a yelling match that sounded shrill and hysterical above the crashing waves. Cornelisz fought his way to the ladder, climbed so that he stood next to them.
“What has happened?” he yelled, struggling to keep the smirk from his face. Pelsaert had two fistfuls of the bigger man’s shirt. He loosened his grip to point out over the thundering waters. “This drunkard,” he yelled, “This utter fool has damned us all. He’s run us aground!”
“Not I!” The skipper was swaying under the older man’s assault, or the uncertain footing, or the half-pint of rum he had been sneaking all night with Cornelisz’s quiet encouragement. A line of blood ran from one nostril, and a red welt was already forming on the side of his face. Gods, thought Cornelisz, had Pelsaert struck him? Could things be going so well, so quickly? “They were your directions! Your directions, not mine!”
Pelsaert lifted his hand again and Jacobsz responded in kind. Cornelisz risked a grin, and looked beyond them to the cliffs rising out of the sea, the gift he had received from his dark Lords. His smile died, to be replaced by an uncertain frown.
“Aground?” he asked? “On what?”
There were no cliffs. No bluff. No land of any type to meet his gaze. Only the rain, and the black clouds, and the white crests of waves as they rose high and smashed back down onto the backs of their neighbours. Pelsaert dragged Jacobsz to the edge of the deck and pushed him against the rail. Cornelisz followed.
“There!” the Commander shouted, pointing to something barely visible off the starboard bow. “That there.”
Cornelisz followed his gaze. Thirty feet away, barely poking through the angry waters, lay two long lines of pallid sand. He stared at them, and felt dark laughter curling around the base of his skull.
“Land ho,” he muttered. Ignoring the murderous glares of his compatriots he backed away, and slid back down to his shelter beneath the deck.
* * *
It took eight days to abandon ship. Pelsaert was inconsolable. All his dreams of glory, of advancement within the East India Company, vanished with the waters that slowly snuck in through the broken hull and swamped the lower decks. Cornelisz stayed to the end, sticking to the pretence that he could not swim and was afraid of the rising sea. In reality, Pelsaert’s glory was doomed the day Cornelisz had persuaded Jacobsz to separate the Batavia from the protection of its little fleet as they rounded the Cape of Good Hope.
Cornelisz cared nothing for swimming or rescue. He had assembled a tiny band of mutineers on the promise of piracy and riches. Now he sat above them, in Pelsaert’s stateroom, in Pelsaert’s red-lined chair, and gave them a benevolent gaze as they grew drunk on the fulfilment of his promise.
Wine, there was, and chests of silver brought up from the hold, and baubles ripped from the chests of panicked families as they fought to desert the broken ship and gain the meagre safety of the tiny atolls that surrounded it. While the human cattle panicked, Cornelisz and his pirates lived like Gods of a dying world. Then the ship broke its back during the night. The silver descended into the water below, along with the wine and the drinking water. Grudgingly, in fear, sneaking along the timbers like careful rats, even the pirates deserted.
Finally, Cornelisz was alone. He stalked the halls of his crumbling empire, listening to the dark voices of his allies as they smashed against the empty vessel. Now, he could talk to them without interruption. Now, he could ask them why.
Torrentius had been gaoled two years ago. The Dutch had ensnared him, caged him with charges of heresy and Satanism, stripped him of followers, power, and freedom. But Cornelisz had escaped. He kept his allegiances secret, and formulated a plan to remove his Master to a refuge beyond the edge of the horizon, where a ship filled with riches, women, and disciples-for-the-making could be his. All he needed was a land on which to place them. “Why?” he asked the black voices as they ate his ship, “Why would you betray my Master like this?”
But the waves only laughed, and crushed the ship in their grasp. After four days of solitude Cornelisz abandoned his frenzied questions. Gripping a broken spar he washed up on the nearest island, to be treated by the weeping survivors like a returning saint.
“The Onderkoopman is saved! God bless Mister Cornelisz.” They hauled him from the surf, laid him upon sand-encrusted blankets and warmed him next to the most pathetic fire Cornelisz had ever seen. When he was sufficiently rested, and had a gathering of his faithful around him, he allowed them to explain his rapturous reception.
Pelsaert had gone. The news almost set him to laughing. He had taken Jacobsz and nearly fifty of the ship’s crew, and abandoned the rest to their fate. The survivors were leaderless, panicking, reliant upon the shrinking goodwill of the company soldiers who crouched at the far end of the island like a pack of snarling dogs. But now a representative of the Company was amongst them again, and the civilians were crying that their prayers were answered. Cornelisz listened in open amazement, and when they were finished with their story, he leaned back against the soft sand and closed his eyes.
“Oh, my friends,” he said, to the waves that licked powerlessly against the land. “Prayers have been answered, indeed.”
* * *
All their water lay in the ocean. The barrels of drinking water had fallen with the rest of the supplies. Now people were dying of thirst. The pirates were bored, and beginning to fight amongst themselves. The soldiers were casting long glances in their direction. Cornelisz looked over his tiny empire and saw it divided. Then a fool named Woutersz got drunk—there was always drink, stashed in flasks and bottles by morons who would have been better served to pour them out and dip them in the barrels before they were lost—and bragged about his role in the abo
rted mutiny, and the treasure that was to be his.
Cornelisz met with his lieutenants. And the braggart was killed, deep in the night, when nobody was awake to see the knife sliding across his throat, and the stein held beneath the cut filling with blood that bubbled and hissed as it struck cold pewter.
Cornelisz drew designs in the wet sand of the tide line, and poured the hot blood inside. The laughing voices accepted his offer. And ten days after he dragged himself upon the shore, rain came to the tiny islands.
The people danced, and fell to their knees in unconscious imitation of Woutersz’s last moments. They thanked the God that Cornelisz knew had played no part in their deliverance. Pots and pans were laid out to fill with water, barrels were opened and left under the deluge. Hammocks and blankets and canvases were stretched between tent poles, to fill and sag under the weight of the deliverance they caught. Through it all, Cornelisz sat in his tent and watched through the open flaps, counting the bodies that ran back and forth through the rain.
* * *
No man dies without leaving questions. Woutersz was not missed, but his absence was noted. His story gained weight, and credence. Soon enough, the soldiers marched down in double file and stood before Cornelisz’s tent demanding answers to questions of loyalty and fitness for command. He stood at his tent flaps and stared Weibbe Hayes, their leader, in the eye, then invited him inside.
“Water,” he said, as Hayes gazed at him across the driftwood table he had erected within. “The problem is water.”
“Explain.” Hayes was a simple man in Cornelisz’s estimation. A common soldier, not even the highest rank within the company, but ramrod straight in bearing, bluff to a fault, a company man from the toes of his scuffed boots to his rank hair.
Cornelisz mistrusted simple men. He held up his empty mug and tilted it so Hayes could see inside.
“We’ve water enough for how long, do you think?”
Hayes squinted at him. “Days, perhaps. A week.”
“And what happens then?” The two men glared at each other across the broken strip of wood. When Hayes gave no response, Cornelisz answered for him. “People start dying.”
“People have already started dying.”
“Woutersz?” Cornelisz gave a contemptuous shrug. “Some men in this company do not share the breeding of you and me, Private. Men get desperate. Desperate men . . . ” He shrugged again.
“You’re saying you don’t know who killed him?”
“I’m saying neither you nor I know he was even killed.” Cornelisz indicated the world outside the tent. “A man like Woutersz? Who is to say he didn’t get drunk and try to swim back to the Batavia? Or take it into his head to follow our beloved Opperkoopman . . . ” The venom in his voice could not be hidden, “ . . . and fall off whatever plank he chose for his boat? The point is . . . ” He jiggled the mug, recapturing the soldier’s attention. “Woutersz has gone, and a whole colony of thirsty people remain. People who will become much thirstier in days. Perhaps a week.”
Hayes stared at him through narrow eyes. “What is your point, Onderkoopman?”
Cornelisz smiled. “When there is nothing for soldiers to fight, it is time for them to become explorers.”
* * *
It was all so simple. The soldiers lined up, two by two like animals ready for the ark, on the tiny beach. Two by two, they climbed into the colony’s remaining boats. Cornelisz stood on the sand and watched a complement of his men pair off and climb into each boat after them, two by two. Then they rowed off, past the shallow breakers and across the water towards the largest of the islands, some hundreds of feet distant. The soldiers were searching for water, he had told the civilians. They were off to find our salvation. He and Hayes had agreed: once it was found they would light a fire. The boats would launch once more, to bring them back and the new-found water with them. Hayes sat in the last boat, stiff-backed and still-faced, and watched Cornelisz as the boats pushed away. Cornelisz matched his stare until they were too far apart to distinguish the soldier’s features. Then he turned away.
“What happens when they send up the signal?” Jacop Pietersz, his most trusted lieutenant, asked, as they trudged the short distance towards Cornelisz’s tent. “What do we do then?”
“There is no water.”
“How do you know?”
“The waves told me.” Cornelisz brushed past Pietersz and into his tent, sealing himself away from the world.
The water had told him, on the beach, his fingers sticky with blood and sand and his head bowed under the pounding blackness of their presence. The islands were dry, empty, bereft. There was no life here, except that which he promised to sacrifice to the waves and which they would give him in return. That was why he had despatched the soldiers. His greatest threat, stranded on a rock with no water, no weapons, and only themselves to feast upon when hunger and thirst and madness brought them to the edge of death. Cornelisz smiled, and indulged in a long draught of precious water. Only two things remained: the civilians he had promised the waves, and the men who would carry out the sacrifice.
Cornelisz was ready to free his Master.
* * *
Heat is the source of all change in the world. It can bend and liquefy metal; turn sand to glass; crack stone; turn sprout to full-grown plant. Heat is the lingua franca of the universe, the element that makes magic work. It opens up the walls between the worlds and makes all things possible. The closer to the life force of the universe the source is, the more powerful the magic it makes. Fire is close. Small magics can be accomplished with fire. But for great feats, for opening up a tunnel across the ether between Holland and the edge of the world and dragging a man through, something greater is required.
In the hierarchy of magic, nothing is hotter than blood.
For the price of three lives, the waves gave him clear weather so his men could strip the Batavia of straight wood and metal for weapons. For a family of six, they weakened his subjects so they could not object when gathered all food and water and impounded it within the circle of his militia’s tents. For a gaggle of sickly victims they directed his men to a tent at the far corner of the ragged colony, and served him up a concubine.
Cornelisz had lusted after Lucretia Van der Mylen from the moment he first saw her. Dainty little Lucretia, tiptoeing about the ship like her tits were too perfect for touching. Aloof Lucretia, keeping her tiny waist and long, white neck covered in preparation for her new husband, who loved her so much he had left her to make the journey alone. A husband who scurried ahead to Java to get his pego polished by Asian whores. Pelsaert’s favourite passenger. His swan amongst savages. Cornelisz had watched from the Batavia’s rigging as a group of his pirates-to-be attacked her in an effort to bring Pelsaert into disrepute. Cornelisz remembered her skin in the dim moonlight; her slim, white figure twisting, writhing as his men tore her clothes off; saw the swinging of her breasts and heard the slap of his men’s hands against her firm arse cheeks in his daydreams.
The sacrifice of a herd of puking cattle was nothing to have her kneeling in the sand before him, head bowed so he could see the arch of her neck through her unwashed hair.
Cornelisz once smashed a vase worth a thousand guilder, just to know he could destroy something so beautiful and get away with it. It took a week— a week where she twisted away at his every approach and screamed every time he tried to touch her—before Pietersz held a knife to her throat and explained just how long it would take her to die if she refused to let Cornelisz break her. After that, he broke her whenever he felt like it.
His men took women too. Now the struggle was to get them out from their tents, to give them a sense of purpose. Cornelisz formed them into six teams of four and set them to work. They were the only ones who had weapons, water, direction. Everyone else was livestock, to be fed to the waves.
The island was small, perhaps a mile in length, but after so long pressed together in the Batavia’s cramped quarters, the civilians had scattered across i
t as soon as they were able. Cornelisz sent his men among them in the dark, quiet as panthers. Every night, he sacrificed warm, fresh blood to the waves, until the beach smelled of offal and his fingers were never free of the sand that stuck to them. He returned to his bed after midnight, battling Lucretia’s cold and unmoving body, until the only reason he had for digging his fingers into the sand was the pleasure of driving their gritty lengths inside her to hear her pain. Every night he fell to his knees in the tide line, bowed his head over the cooling bodies of his prey, and begged the waves to bring him Torrentius. And every night they slithered up onto the beach to whisper in his ears.
“More, more.”
The men were beyond caring. They did not share his passion, or care for his cause. They were simply savages he had chained to his banner. So long as they could kill, fuck and stay drunk on the diminishing stores of rum, they were content to wreak carnage on the defenceless civilians. Soon, not even the darkness was enough. Killings began to occur during the day. Random, indiscriminate slaughter, with no thought for consequence or the magic that was lost. Cornelisz watched a pack chase a child along the beach before cutting it down with wild glee, passing around a flagon of rum as they each took turns to hack at the moaning body. He held his knuckles to his mouth as his carefully prepared altar became an abattoir, without ritual or request. Finally, as the child’s body was dragged across the sand and thrown unceremoniously into the water, he set his face and sought out Pietersz.
“They need a lesson,” he said. “Something to show they are not indispensable. They are servants to my cause, not free men.”
“What do you want?” Pietersz lounged on a rescued hammock. His concubine, a girl of perhaps thirteen, sat in his lap, swigging from a bottle. Cornelisz turned his gaze from them, saw a tent alone at the far edge of the ridge upon which they sat. A hospital, of sorts, where sick children had been deposited to cough and moan in isolation.
The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013 Page 35